


when the autumn moon is bright

by spiralpegasus



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Light Angst, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Pre-Relationship, brief mentions of suicidal ideation, bye glenn :(, felix has a lot of feelings about humanity and dimitri and himself, werewolf felix hugo fraldarius
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:35:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27314908
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spiralpegasus/pseuds/spiralpegasus
Summary: The Fraldarius bloodline has a secret. With the Crest of their family comes the blood of a wolf, bred to kill and protect in the service of the royal family. Felix, born with the first Major Crest in generations, has a particularly hard time coping with the animal that lives beneath his skin.Or, Felix is a werewolf who has complicated thoughts and feelings about himself, his family, Dimitri, and Sylvain.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd & Felix Hugo Fraldarius, Felix Hugo Fraldarius & Sylvain Jose Gautier, pre-dimisylvix
Comments: 5
Kudos: 79





	when the autumn moon is bright

**Author's Note:**

> quick werewolf felix for halloween, sorry i haven't posted anything in ages
> 
> no explicit dimilix or sylvix but this is very much intended to be pre-dimisylvix (rest assured that later in this universe they become a happy ot3 but for now felix is just having confusing feelings about both of them)
> 
> warning for graphic violence in the part featuring the western rebellion but other than that, this is pretty tame
> 
> felix's pov of sylvain mentions mild suicidal ideation on sylvain's part, but it's very brief and non-graphic
> 
> title from howl by f+tm because i am predictable and uncreative
> 
> happy halloween!

A blessing, his father calls it. A gift of their bloodline, so they can protect their lieges to the very last – even without sword, without shield, without hope, a Fraldarius still has their fangs and claws. Felix doesn’t see it this way, and never has, because he knows the truth of it— 

Beneath the skin of every Fraldarius lives a beast. 

There’s a reason no one outside the family knows the nature of their blood, not even the Blaiddyds they’re sworn to protect. The transformation is a horrific one. They become hulking, four-legged things with more teeth than sense, with a mind focused only on violence in the service of blind loyalty. Little more than attack dogs, the wolves of Fraldarius. To bear the Crest is to bear the blood of an animal, and the blood is stronger in Felix than it has been in generations. 

“It is a noble burden we carry,” Rodrigue tells him, has been telling him his whole life. “Part of our humanity, in exchange for the power to protect our King no matter the cost.” There’s little that’s _noble_ about being forced into the body of a beast every month, or about living with the instincts of an animal thrumming in his blood. 

It’s not always _harmful._ Often, it’s just undignified. A normal person doesn’t get the urge to sniff their friends all over when they’ve been away, or roll in things that have been dead for days. A normal person doesn’t howl and cry when they’ve been left alone for too long. And a normalperson _definitely_ doesn’t have to strip naked and run around on all fours once a night every month of the year. 

“What about when I have to leave the estate?” Felix always frets to Glenn, who always laughs at him, though not without sympathy. Stupid Minor Crest Glenn and his stupid ability stay human on the full moon. The answer, as always, is to be careful and stay hidden. Come home before the full moon if you can, and if you can’t, lock your door and be silent. 

Felix never hates his nature more than when he has to kick Dimitri or Sylvain or Ingrid out of his room, claiming he wants to sleep alone when in reality the wolf in him is howling for their company. 

His whole life, he’s had a reputation as a strange child. Quiet, clingy, easily startled. (Wolves are pack animals, and especially as a young child, he could not bear to be alone for long. His ears and nose are far more sensitive than even his father and his brother’s, which makes him easy to frighten. Glenn is good-natured about it all, but Felix never misses the way his father sighs when the maids start to whisper.) 

As he ages, hiding his instincts becomes… not easier, but he gets better at it. He learns to leash the wolf inside him – to swallow the whimpers when his friends leave him at the end of the day, to hide his flinches when a door slams too loudly. He learns to coexist with the creature, though the coexistence is an uneasy one marked by indecision and a constant internal struggle. 

(The night Glenn dies, he and the beast in him howl as one, tearing through the woods screaming their grief and pain at an uncaring moon.) 

(The wolf doesn’t feel the way a human feels. Doesn’t act the way a human acts. But it knows love, and it knows grief, and it mourns the gaping wound Glenn’s death leaves in their life just the same as Felix does.) 

* * *

Dimitri saves Felix’s life during the western rebellion. 

Felix has been off for most of the battle – distracted by Dimitri’s absent eyes and trembling fingers, trying too hard to watch his Prince’s back instead of his own. A whistle near his ear is his only warning before he turns to see an axe descending on his face, and he squeezes his eyes shut and feels the hot blood splash across his skin and thinks, _this is it._

But no pain ever comes, and he opens his eyes, and the hand that had once held an axe is now gone at the wrist. Blood and veins and bone, the screaming of a man who hadn’t known agony until this moment, and then a choked gurgle as a lance emerges from the throat of the person that would have seen Felix dead. 

“Dimitri,” Felix gasps, but the sound is swallowed by the chaos of the battlefield, unheard to all but Felix’s ears. 

Dimitri tears through people with his lance and his hands alike, soaked to the elbow in blood. His face, his hair, his armor are all splattered with red, some of it in slimy chunks that slide from his body as he moves to his next victim. When his face twists into a smile and he begins to laugh, there’s blood between his teeth, like he’s just as much a beast as the one that lives in Felix’s bones. 

_A beast—an animal—a boar—_

Horror washes cold and thick down Felix’s spine when Dimitri’s manic eyes meet his. _How stupid is this,_ Felix thinks as Dimitri begins to advance. _A line of animals bred to kill for the Blaiddyds, and they have a beast of their own to do it for us._

And still. And still. 

The beast in Felix howls for Dimitri – in pain, in joy, in some shared animal desire for bloodshed. _Look how well he protects us,_ it crows to Felix, _look how strong our alpha is!_

“They will not have you,” the creature wearing Dimitri’s face snarls. “They will not take anything else from me!” 

The fear and disgust coiling in Felix’s gut is less for the animal that’s been made of his best friend and more for the way the animal in _him_ rejoices at it. _He loves us. He’ll protect us. Pack, pack, pack—_

Felix sees his own future in Dimitri’s eyes. Sees what he’ll become if he lets his grip on the wolf’s leash slip even a little. And it terrifies him more than anything. 

* * *

It’s four years before he speaks to Dimitri again, though Felix’s relationships with his other friends don’t survive the Tragedy unscathed either. 

Ingrid tiptoes around Felix, on the rare occasions she sees him. Glenn’s ghost lingers around them whenever they try to speak. Ingrid repeats the word “knighthood” like it will bring Felix any sort of comfort, like he or the wolf curled up inside him care about ideals more than they want their brother back. Felix wields his words like a weapon, tearing into her for the way she grieves. It’s ugly, and it’s painful, and their friendship fractures into almost nothing as the gap Glenn left between them widens like a gaping wound. 

And Sylvain… seeing the person Sylvain pretends to be is almost as painful as seeing the person Dimitri has become. His smiles are hollow, and he always has bruises, even after Miklan is disowned and cast out of Gautier. He dismisses Felix’s concern like Felix is nothing but a child – “it’s grown-up stuff, you wouldn’t understand” – and Felix eventually breaks down and cries almost as painfully as the night he heard of Glenn’s death. 

“You can’t die,” Felix sobs into a bewildered Sylvain’s chest. He’s not articulating himself well. He knows Sylvain isn’t _dying,_ not like Glenn died – but he’s dying like Dimitri died, and in some ways, that’s more painful, because no one else seems to realize they’re gone. Speaking to their corpses, tearing open the scab of his grief every time he sees them try to smile, is a protracted sort of suffering that neither he nor the wolf in him know how to cope with. 

“I’m not going anywhere, Felix,” Sylvain says, more softly than he’s spoken to Felix in months. A tentative hand presses against the back of Felix’s head, and he nearly cries out at the relief of it, of the contact and connection his whole body aches for. He clings to Sylvain, pressing closer and closer like he can burrow into Sylvain’s ribs and become a part of him. There are so few things Felix has left. There are so few things Felix can still save. 

“Don’t leave me,” Felix begs, nearly incoherent. _Not like Dimitri. Not like Glenn. Don’t go where I can’t follow._

“I won’t.” Something seems to click for Sylvain. His hands become firmer, less unsure, as he draws Felix against his chest and tucks Felix’s face into the hollow of his throat and shoulder. “You always see right through me, don’t you? You knew I was going to…” 

He doesn’t finish the sentence. He doesn’t need to. 

Felix balls up a hand into a weak fist, hitting Sylvain’s chest with no strength. “You’re not allowed to go without me,” he says. It’s childish, and it’s pathetic, and it’s raw and painful and honest. He doesn’t know if Sylvain actually wanted to die, or if he just didn’t care if his actions ended in his death. Neither thought brings Felix any comfort. 

“Okay,” Sylvain says, tightening his grip on Felix. “Okay. I promise. If I die, it’s only because you’re there dying with me.” 

* * *

Sylvain won’t break a promise. Not to Felix. But even with that fear assuaged, the years between the Tragedy and their attendance at the Officers’ Academy are still long and lonely ones. Felix sees Sylvain only rarely, and he sees Ingrid even less often. Dimitri writes letters sometimes. Felix doesn’t read them, though he can’t bring himself to burn them either. 

His father insists that Glenn’s death was noble and necessary, and Felix snarls that they don’t even have a body to mourn because Rodrigue is too ashamed to admit that the dead beast on the battlefield was his son. What good is pride? What good are secrets? All Felix has left of his brother is scorched armor and the cold thought of Glenn’s body rotting unmourned and unburied an entire country away. 

“Our lives are only worth as much as our ability to protect our liege,” Rodrigue says dangerously, the glint of the beast in his eyes making Felix cower despite himself. “If you can’t understand that, then perhaps you should have been the one to die instead of your brother.” 

Felix doesn’t try to talk to his father about Glenn after that. He doesn’t try to talk about anything at all. 

He doesn’t say goodbye the night he leaves for the academy. 

* * *

The new professor teaching the Blue Lions class is eerie in a way that sets both Felix and the wolf on edge. There’s something dangerous in the way they move, despite their placid expression and their inoffensive manner of speech. Felix has lived his whole life as a predator surrounded by the company of other predators. He knows all too well what it feels like to be around an animal much more dangerous than he is. 

Still, the professor doesn’t seem inclined to use whatever inhuman strength lives inside them for anything but protecting their students. It’s even something of a comfort, especially when Felix witnesses them put Dimitri on his back during training. _They can control him,_ Felix thinks, _even if I could never beat him._ The wolf adds in a sad whisper, _even if I could never bring myself to fight him._

The boar still tries to approach him, and Felix hates the way the beast in him sings out for the beast in Dimitri. _Alpha, pack, home,_ the wolf whines whenever the boar smiles at him, and Felix curls his lip and stalks away. He’s disgusted. Disgusted with himself, disgusted with Dimitri, disgusted with the way the wolf howls so desperately for the company of not just Dimitri but the animal Dimitri has become. 

(Full moons at the academy are harder than they ever were at home. Even if he and his father never spoke anymore, there was always something comforting about having another wolf nearby. Someone who knew. Someone who understood. In the walls of the monastery, Felix is desperately, desperately alone.) 

* * *

Sylvain is bleeding, cornered, lance on the ground and far from his reach. Felix’s legs tremble as he stands between his best friend and the demonic beast approaching them, fists clenched like he can hope to fight back with his bare hands against a creature that much larger than he is. 

Sylvain’s raspy voice breathes impossible things behind him – _no, Felix, run, it’s not worth it, don’t die here with me –_ and though Felix can hear them, he refuses to acknowledge them. He promised Sylvain. He _promised._ If there’s even a scrap of a chance that he can get Sylvain out of this alive, he can’t abandon it, even if he’s injured and unarmed and barely able to keep his feet. 

Without sword, without shield, without hope. 

_Never show your true form to anyone, unless the wolf is the only thing left standing between your liege and his death._

Felix has fangs. He has claws. He has the blood of an animal bred to kill and protect, and Sylvain is one of the only things Felix has left that he can still save. 

He breathes in, letting his fists relax. When he breathes out, the transformation ripples across his body from his feet to his head, sending him tumbling to all fours with a scream that rips and tears and reforms itself into a howl. 

“Felix?” he hears Sylvain breathe, in a silent moment of crystal clarity. 

Then the world crashes down around him in a cacophony of noise and sensation, and Felix is leaping with deadly intent at the beast that dares threaten what Felix calls his. 

* * *

He wakes in the infirmary with no memory of how he got there. 

The professor’s blank gaze betrays nothing as they tell Felix he needs to rest. There’s no mention of his transformation, so he can only assume _(hope, pray)_ that he’d fallen unconscious and shifted back, as he often does after a stressful transformation. 

Still, even if no one else saw… His eyes slide over to the bed beside his, where Sylvain is watching him thoughtfully. When Sylvain opens his mouth, Felix almost flinches, ready for the fear. The disgust. The condemnation. But what comes out of Sylvain’s mouth is— 

“Is this why you hate it when people call you a lone wolf?” 

Felix groans and drops his head back against the pillow at Sylvain’s inane question. 

“Hey, I’m just curious!” Sylvain’s gleeful amusement belies his words. “I always thought it was a bit of an overreaction on your part, but it’s all becoming clear, now.” 

“Stop,” Felix mutters, voice muffled by the arm he’s thrown across his face. 

“All those times we compared you to a cat,” Sylvain says wonderingly. “But our Felix was a little puppy dog the whole time.” 

“Shut _up!”_ Felix snarls, something in him snapping at Sylvain’s cavalier attitude. He sits up to glare at Sylvain, hoping even a bit of the horrible beast that lives inside him shines through in his expression. “You _saw_ what I turned into! Don’t pretend like it’s something cute and harmless!” 

Sylvain tilts his head, silent and thoughtful. His expression has fallen into something more neutral, less fake, but it doesn’t contain any of the fear or disgust Felix expected. 

“I did see what you turned into,” Sylvain says, slow and careful, like Felix is the wolf again instead of the human. “And I saw the way you protected me.” 

“That’s not,” Felix starts, but Sylvain’s steady stare silences him. 

“You moved like yourself,” Sylvain continues, almost conversationally. “Even on four legs instead of two, I could tell it was you.” He grins, crooked and sincere. “And once the demonic beast was dead, do you remember what you did?” 

Felix’s stomach drops. He rarely remembers much from his more intense transformations, where instinct rules instead of rational thought and he wakes up beside a half-eaten animal and no recollection of the hunt that put it there. Did he _hurt_ Sylvain? He’s never been around anyone but other wolves when he shifts. Were some of those bites and tears _Felix’s,_ not the beast’s? 

“Hey, don’t look like that,” Sylvain says hastily, raising his hands as if to soothe. “You didn’t hurt me. You… kind of did the opposite.” 

“The… opposite,” Felix echoes. 

Sylvain’s smile softens into something gentle and impossibly fond. “You crawled over to me,” he says. “On your belly. Like you didn’t want to scare me. You where whining, and you had your ears back like this.” Sylvain lifts his hands and lays them flat on either side of his own head, like a dog would lay its ears if it was upset. 

“I… did that?” Felix says weakly. 

“You did. And when I said, ‘it’s okay,’ you climbed up on my legs.” Sylvain drops his hands to his lap and pats it, as if to show Felix where he’d been. “Laid right on top of me, like you didn’t want me to move. You were bleeding everywhere, but all you could think of was keeping _me_ safe.” 

“I…” It’s so far removed from anything Felix has ever thought about the beast. He knew it could love, but he didn’t know that its ability to love tempered its bloodthirstiness. 

“You passed out. Turned back into a person, right in my lap.” Sylvain’s smile turns sheepish. “Your clothes were, uh, a little messed up, but I tried to make you as decent as I could before the Professor found us.” 

Felix buries his face in his hands. The wolf isn’t too much larger than he is, but human clothes aren’t built to accommodate lupine proportions. He can only imagine how much of his body Sylvain saw. 

“Felix,” Sylvain starts. “Look. I don’t care what you are.” 

“I’m an animal,” Felix mumbles into his hands. “No better than the boar is.” Worse, even, because Felix was born with this creature’s blood in his veins. 

“I don’t know,” Sylvain says, carefully light. “I think you and Dimitri are both more human than either of you give yourselves credit for. I’ve seen monsters pretending to be people. You’re not like that.” 

Felix’s heart aches at that, and the wolf snarls at the reminder of Sylvain’s family, of the people Sylvain associates with. _Pack,_ it howls. _Protect._

It hits him, then, what the wolf cares most about. Pack. Protection. Violence only in service of those it’s loyal to. A beast, yes, but a beast capable of compassion, of love. 

“And Dimitri?” he asks Sylvain, hesitant, halting. 

Sylvain hums. “Dimitri isn’t like that, either.” 

Felix used to think that he was the only one who knew what Dimitri really was – he saw Dimitri become what he is now, saw him tear people apart and grin with blood between his teeth. But Sylvain saw the same of Felix. Saw the beast in him, saw the worst and most violent Felix has to offer, and still, he smiles at him so gently. So fondly, like he knows every part of Felix and loves him even more for it. 

The beast in him still yearns for Dimitri. Maybe it’s Felix who yearns for him, too, the same way he and the wolf both yearn for Sylvain. Maybe someday, he… 

“I’ll keep it in mind,” Felix says, more softly than he means to. 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading and i hope you enjoyed!


End file.
